Nobody needs another plan. We bet you have plenty, mostly sitting on a shelf. What you do need is a roadmap to the future that is operational as well as inspirational, as grounded in current reality as it is visionary. A tool to create your best future, to galvanize thinking and action, to get things done. You need people who own the map and are committed to making the journey successful, and you need a process to keep building the map as the territory changes over time.

We will support you in planning activities that not only provide strategic direction, but also day-to-day guidance and alignment with your goals. We provide planning facilitation, stakeholder engagement and facilitation for individual meetings and events to create your future now.

Strategic Planning

It used to be that you could invest in a strategic plan and be reasonably sure that things would be pretty stable while you executed. Not any more! We live in a world characterized by VUCA (Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity). Which means that the most important part of your plan is your ability to change it.

This calls for a new breed of activity, where you engage in cycles of planning and execution, trying new things as you go, and building capacity to execute before the ink is dry. This may sound complicated, but it isn’t. It just requires a different methodology, one that we’ll support you in every step of the way and leave you knowing how to replicate and use when our job is through.

Stakeholder Engagement

When it comes to stakeholders, there’s a lot of talk about “buy-in”. If we want them to “buy” our idea, plan or process, the thinking goes, we must do a good job of selling it to them. Sometimes it works; often it doesn’t. Either way, it’s neither the most efficient, nor the most effective way to engage with the people who can influence your success.

There’s another approach, where stakeholders are part of the process from the beginning to help create a win-win-win. A win for you, a win for them, and a win for the everyone affected by what you do. We call it “join-in”.

The idea is to include stakeholders early and often in creating plans, testing ideas and implementing them. By including the people who affect – and are affected – by what you do, you build champions from the start, and work out the kinks with those who may otherwise stand in the way. Find the best approaches to achieve next steps with everyone pulling together. It’s a good way to go!

Facilitation

For many people in organizations, meeting is a dirty word. But it doesn’t have to be. What if people could get together in groups that were efficient and effective and where people had fun? What if decisions could be made with a minimum of drama and a maximum of creative input on the part of everyone in the room? Sound like fantasy? It’s not. It’s what we do. And we teach you how to do it as well.

We also facilitate meetings and events of all sizes, so you can do what you do best.

Zing

Zing is a learning and meeting facilitation system used by M&B to integrate multiple interests and viewpoints, to assist in the creation of new knowledge.